


Tongues of Flame: What if...

by Mx4



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3095492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx4/pseuds/Mx4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just some spin-offs from my ongoing fic "The First Sparks" in "The Game of Heavens" series. (May become part of an ongoing series based on what reviewers and readers request.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jon took Arya with him on his personal quest? Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ynoidea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ynoidea/gifts).



> Well, it's not exactly Jon and Arya's adventures through the North together yet ynoidea but it is certainly laying the foundation for it. Hope it meets your expectations dear!! Do be sure to let me know one way or the other! ;)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How one decision can suddenly turn an entire plan on its head

Arya Stark was unhappy with her older brother Jon.

If one was prone to understatement, this could be said to be a mildly unusual circumstance for her. For ever since she had been born, she had felt an outsider of Winterfell. Unlike her half-brother Jon Snow, she had always been a true daughter of the Lord and Lady of Winterfell: Eddard and Catelyn Stark. But yet it was Jon and their shared father that she shared the most characteristics with. 

The startling grey eyes. The blacker hair color. The longer face. The sharper body angles and that noticeable tendency toward silence and melancholy. It was so unusual considering her brown haired brother Robb (who was Jon’s age) and her auburn haired older sister (who was younger than Jon and Robb but unfortunately older than Arya) that when they had all been a few years younger, Sansa had once asked their lady mother point blank if Arya was a bastard too.

She thought her sister didn’t know, but Arya did. How could she not considering she already knew Sansa and Sansa’s friend Jeyne Poole’s opinion on her expressed as “Arya Horseface” or a quiet neighing sound just below Septa Mordane’s hearing whenever she entered the Septa’s room for the daily lesson and Arya’s daily hours of wasted time?

It hurt when she understood that it was bad for her to look the way she did, especially considering she shared more interests in common with Robb and Jon (and later Bran and Rickon when they were born to Winterfell) than she did Sansa. She didn’t look right and she didn’t act right either. Her mother was certainly never shy to let her know that she was acting unladylike and asking why she couldn’t be more like Sansa.

When Arya had been younger, she had decided it was because her lady mother found it easier to favor Sansa because Sansa looked like her. But a while later, she decided that couldn’t be right. Because if that were the case than father would’ve favored Jon more than Robb. She knew this because when people couldn’t get caught by her mother’s pointed glares and sharper tongue, they would often muse on how startlingly like the Lord of Winterfell young Snow was and how it was such a shame the child who looked the most like their lord was the lone stain upon his honor.

Arya didn’t think it a shame to have someone who looked like their father and herself around Winterfell. She especially didn’t think so considering Jon had always treated her well. When she had been young, he had always held her when she asked him. He had not dismissed her desire to hear stories of legendary heroes and act them out with thick sticks when she got older and a bit more coordinated. She learned early that if she wanted to be bored, she was to ask Sansa or Mother to tell her a story.

All their stories were the same.

Prince/Lord So-and-So was an honorable young man. Princess/Lady This-and-That was a proper young lady. As they met through their proper lordly parents, they courted each other. He exchanged a favor for her pretty blush, she exchanged a song for his dazzling smile. He won a tournament/dueled a dishonorable rival/overcame a great challenge/proved himself worthy to her lord father for her hand. And they all lived happily ever after to have their own beautiful, courtly, proper princes and princesses/lordlings and ladies.

It. Was. So. Damn. BOORRRING!

Sansa had not appreciated this opinion the last time she had tried to tell Arya a proper lady’s story, especially when Arya was able to predict the story that Sansa was going to tell almost word for word. Her lady mother had lectured about cheek for it certainly, but to Arya's mind it wasn't cheek if it was true.

But if she wanted her interest peaked, she was to ask Jon. Not Robb or Theon because they would tease her for being a little girl making play at being a boy. (Robb with a fond smile, Theon with a mocking one.)

But not Jon. He would nod and he would ask her what kind of story she wanted to hear.

Jon was how she came to know the name of Aegon the Conquerer’s sisters Viscenya and Rhaeneys. Jon was how she knew of the confrontation between Rhaeneys and Maeria Martell. Jon was how she knew of the deeds of legendary heroes and great battles.

And yet Jon was not all fun and games either. Certainly he would always practice with her should she ask him. He would take her seriously too when she did, a look of visible concentration in his furrowed brow as she attacked and swung at him with her stick sword. But when he had first seen a man executed and every time he and Robb had gone with father to see justice done since, he had told her the truth when she asked him what it was like.

He could never quite explain, but Arya much appreciated his efforts to do so anyway.

Though that was not the case here now. She had recently been ill. She knew Jon had healed her through some mystical means. After finally managing to sneak into his room, she had thought that all would be returned to normal now. That things could go back to the way they were between everyone: with Robb learning to be Lord of Winterfell, Sansa learning to be a proper lady, Theon…doing…whatever it was Theon did in Winterfell while she, Bran and Rickon successfully talked (occasionally pestered) Jon into helping them be more prepared for the more formal lessons from Maester Luwin and the rougher training sessions with Ser Rodrik.

But that was not what happened.

Instead Jon had announced at the dinner held the night of his recovery that he was intending to leave Winterfell on a personal journey. When she had demanded answers, she found her question echoed in different phrases from most every one of their siblings. Well, not Sansa. But Sansa’s opinion was rarely her own so much as it was their lady mother’s so she didn’t really count.

Jon would only ever say that he had questions that he needed to discover answers for. And that he would not find them in Winterfell. That seemed ridiculous to Arya. How could he possibly know he wouldn’t find the answers in Winterfell? But he had proven intractable and had promised to talk with everyone about why he was doing this with everyone later.

That night she knew that Jon had talked to the boys or at least managed to intimidate them into not asking him anymore. Though he boasted of being older, Arya knew that even Theon grew hesitant when Jon’s eyes darkened and his temper appeared to begin boiling. The occasions where he had lost his leash on his temper had been rare occurrences but each one was memorable to the Stark children.

And yet still Jon had not told **her** why he was leaving. It had hurt the first time she just barely missed him as he spoke to Mikkan about borrowing a set of blades to go on his journey. But by the fourth time she missed him, she had begun to grow irritated. Jon had never actively avoided her, not even when he was in his blackest moods. They had been constant partners in Winterfell through good and bad. They may have been the only children that looked like their father, but they always reminded each other that it was a good thing. That it proved their Stark blood.

As she searched high and low for Jon, she wondered how she might get answers out of him. For she knew that this would likely prove to be one of those instances where Jon would not answer her. Much as the rest of the castle would tease him for it, she knew that Jon did in fact know perfectly well how to say the word “No” to her. He was just so good natured that it rarely ever became necessary for him to do so.

As she was rounding the corner, she saw Jon walking down the corridor. But instead of following her first impulse and chasing after him, Arya mastered her instinct and instead chose to follow him. Her brother appeared lost in thought so it proved a simple enough matter to follow him without being spotted. As they reached a guest wing that had not been used in Arya’s memory, he started to move his head furtively as if he was starting to suspect he was not alone in this abandoned section of Winterfell.

She quickly moved behind a nearby column, listening intently to his movement as she had Maester Luwin’s two nights ago when she had broken into his sickroom so she might be with him and encourage him to come back to the waking world. She heard a door open. She quickly peeked her head around the column to see which it was. She saw it: the second door from the end of the hallway as he started to enter. She pulled her head back in case he decided to check again. She listened for the closing of the heavy oaken door and the accompanying silence for several beats before she dared to show herself in the open again. Inching her way out into the hall, she moved toward the door she had seen him open.

As she drew closer, she could hear Jon speaking. Was he meeting someone in the castle? A girl?! Mother and father had warned all the older boys about that sort of thing she knew. Mostly for Theon and Robb she had thought (considering her older trueborn brother’s odd hero worship of the Ironborn ward) but not for Jon! But as she placed her ear against he door quickly, she didn’t hear a woman’s voice.

In fact, it didn’t really sound like a man’s voice either. If she had been pressed to describe it, Arya likely would’ve said it sounded like a whisper. Sometimes it sounded like a low whisper, sometimes like a high one. She could only catch every other word or so but considering she couldn’t quite figure out what what gender the speaker could’ve been from listening to them, she thought that should count as an accomplishment in and of itself.

“I’m almost ready to go now.” Jon said softly. “But it hurts so much. I know there is no other way father, but still-”

Arya burst through the door before he finished.

“Father, talk him out of it! He doesn’t need to leave Winterfell-Where’s father?” She interrupted herself upon seeing that Jon was alone in the room with only a flickering fire in the grate for company. Admittedly Jon’s startled and panicked expression was a thing to behold, but she didn’t understand why he was looking like that. He made it sound as though he were talking to father when father clearly wasn’t even in the room! If anyone should be startled, it was her!

“A-Arya!” He stammered, standing up clumsily. “W-What are you doing here?!”

Arya tapped her left foot expectantly. Jon had been ignoring her for a good while now when she had been promised explanations. She didn’t feel inclined to be the nice one and give him a way out right now.

“Who were you talking to?” She asked suspiciously.

She heard a slight echo from the fire place in a paper thin voice saying something.

“Yes…talking to…young spark?” It sounded like.

Before Jon could answer, she quickly followed up.

“Were you talking to the young spark, whoever that is?” She demanded.

There was a palpable silence in the air now. The fire had even seemed to freeze where it was for a moment. The air was tense to her feeling. Her skin prickled uneasily. This felt too much like the time her lady mother had tricked her into confessing her and Jon’s role in Sansa’s wardrobe suddenly smelling of the kennels in a bad way. (And it had taken them so long to figure out how to move all that dog shit up to Sansa’s room without getting any on themselves or anyone seeing them too!)

“Arya…can you…hear him?” Jon asked slowly, sounding simultaneously incredulous and as though he were dreading her answer.

“Hear who?” She asked.

“Us.” She distinctly heard from the fireplace.

Her head moved toward the crackling source of heat. She moved toward it despite Jon’s moving to stop her. She wondered if perhaps Jon was hiding them in the chimney. But what would the point of that be?

“Who is that Jon?” She asked, turning her face toward him. She couldn’t help but smile in the middle of this tense atmosphere. Jon’s gobsmacked expression was just too funny to be ignored.

“But…how?” He asked faintly, leaning back against the wall absentmindedly as his eyes focused on Arya and the fireplace alternately.

“How what?!” Arya asked, starting to get somewhat scared by Jon’s unnerved demeanor. Had she done something wrong to confront him like this?

“…channel your fire…align your hand.” The voice whispered from the grate.

“I…Are you sure?” Jon asked the fire. Why would he be talking to the fire place?

“Yes.” The voice somehow sounded emphatic now despite its distant and smoky nature.

Jon drew a deep breath, visibly steadying himself. As he stood up, her older brother was back in control of himself again. He moved toward the fire and got down on his knees, bringing his head level with Arya’s. Though she was a girl of ten and tall for her age, he was fifteen and almost a man full grown. She looked at him, grey eyes reflecting grey eyes.

“Arya, I need you to trust me.” He said softly. “This will be like the Sept. Except you’ll be able to feel it this time. Do you think you can handle that?”

She nodded before he even finished asking. She had been wanting to find out what it was Jon had done to heal her with the fire and this would be the best kind of way to do so she knew. She moved to face the fireplace, ready for any instruction he might give.

“For this to work, I need you to…to…” Jon appeared to be struggling with describing what it was she needed to do.

“Feel…sense…” Came the whisper from the fire, the heat increasing by a slight amount with both words spoken. Arya’s gooseflesh did not go down.

Jon moved slightly behind and to the right of Arya. He placed his left hand along her left temple, his hand warm to the touch against her hair and her skin. His right hand gently moved hers so that it was facing the fire with an open palm. Then he overlaid his own palm along the back of it. Arya could feel his head next to hers on her right shoulder, his voice having only inches to travel as he instructed her.

“Close your eyes.” He said quietly, keeping almost as still as a statue.

Her lids slammed shut almost instinctively. Now she could feel every wave of heat from the fire, could hear Jon’s every exhale and inhale in her ear, could almost taste the ashes of the fire before her even as she heard it crackling and whispering in its tongues of flame.

“Concentrate all your senses on the fire Arya.” Jon whispered, the barest sense of his heartbeat against her back clear to her somehow heightened senses. Something was happening inside the fire, she could feel it reaching out to her somehow. Was there some kind of magic in it? What was it doing?

And then the voice spoke.

“A pleasure to meet you in better circumstances little one.” It greeted, a smile in its voice. It didn’t sound like a Northern voice. It sounded like what she imagined the King sounded like when Jon told her some of the scant stories their lord father had told him about the Rebellion.

Her eyes flew open. She wouldn’t resist asking.

“Who are you?!” Her voice asked even as Jon had seemed to impossibly gone even stiller, his very breathing apparently ceasing for a moment. But that didn’t truly register with Arya. All she knew was that she could feel every aspect of the fire before her. And there was something inside of it. Something different. Something powerful.

“We are the Tongues of Fire. The Voices of Light. They Who Illuminate the Ways. We are R’hllor. And we are they who the young spark asked to help you.”

Arya looked at Jon on reflex, her grey Stark eyes wide.

“Is this true?” She asked him.

Jon only nodded as he slowly turned to face her.

“Arya…Can you truly hear him?” He asked in a hushed tone.

“Obviously she can young spark.” The voice came from the fire again, startling Arya as it changed to one so close to Sansa’s that she looked around the room to see if her entirely too uptight older sister had abruptly walked in. “Else she would not be able to understand what we say now.”

Jon unceremoniously let go of her hand and temple.

“Jon, what’s going on?” She asked, never feeling just how young she was in the face of this whole thing than at that very moment.

“We are the reason the young spark is leaving Winterfell. So that he may learn control of the abilities we awakened in him.” The voice answered in Sansa’s voice. This time Arya resisted the impulse to look toward the door.

“Powers?!” Arya exclaimed. This was rapidly becoming the single strangest thing that had ever happened in her life.

If she didn’t know better, Arya could’ve sworn the voice was smirking when next it spoke.

“May as well show her young spark.” It said. “You’ve already shown your lord uncle. What’s one more person?”

Before Arya could understand or ask what the voice meant by uncle, Jon numbly outstretched his hand toward her with the palm facing upward as though in a trance. With a visible flexing of his hand, it ignited.

There was silence in the room again before it was abruptly broken by the voice behind Arya in the fireplace.

“You realize what her ability to hear us means don’t you young spark?” the voice inquired almost innocently.

Jon’s eyes abruptly regained life and snapped to the fireplace as an expression of dawning comprehension started to rise on his face.

“No.” He said in a point blank refusal to accept reality.

“Yes.” The voice riposted. “How else would you expect her to control the powers you’ve saddled her with?” It continued with an almost sinisterly innocent tone.

“ME?!” Jon yelped, unable to contain himself.

“Well, considering it was your sacrifice that allowed her to draw closer to our power…yes. You are the reason she’s like this.” It answered, taking entirely too much pleasure in saying what it did to Jon in Arya’s opinion.

Jon turned away from both Arya and the fireplace and walked toward the wall. He contemplated it for only a moment before he abruptly began banging his head against it, speaking only a muttered refrain of “Stupid….stupid…stupid….stupid…” with every impact.

“What is going on here?!” Arya demanded of the fireplace.

“Oh, nothing serious little one.” It answered, an undignified snort Sansa never would've been caught dead making echoing from the crackling logs. “The young spark has simply realized that he now has to explain why you possess similar powers to his and how he now must convince your lord mother and father to let him take you with him!” It couldn’t continue before it started laughing uncontrollably.

Arya had only one thing she could think to say to this.

“WHAT?!?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ###### I honestly can't believe how much this flowed once I sat down to write it. I'd honestly be very curious to hear what you all think of how it turned out and how it might fit with the tone of the original story. Would you be kind enough to leave a review and let me know? :)
> 
> ###### 


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little more establishment before the journey begins

Arya didn’t know what to think when Jon insisted they find their father, her lady mother and Maester Luwin.

Her mind was still reeling from the abrupt change in her worldview that came from discovering the mysterious power behind Jon’s new ability to heal better even than the Maester’s medicines. Let alone the fact that apparently he wanted to now bring her with him because his use of his fire magic upon her had somehow awakened powers of her own. It was like something out of one of the legends she loved to have him tell her when they had been younger and her mother hadn’t been so concerned with her being a proper young lady.

She hardly even noticed as he paced nervously around their father’s solar whilst they waited for her lady mother and Maester Luwin to show up.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the two people entered. Catelyn simply went over to Arya, barely looking at her brother while Maester Luwin asked: “What is this about Jon?”

Jon stopped pacing in front of the window in their father’s study: his grey eyes inscrutable as he looked over the grounds as the faint sounds of the guards practice swords clashing against one another echoed up to the room.

“If it’s all the same to you Maester Luwin, I’d prefer to wait for Lord Stark’s presence. I need him here if we’re all to discuss an urgent matter.” He said respectfully, voice even and unreadable in tone.

Arya’s eyebrows went up. **That** certainly wasn’t a voice she was used to hearing from Jon. Robb or sometimes Sansa if she got in a snippy mood and really played up the whole ‘eldest daughter of Winterfell’ presence. But not Jon.

As they waited for their lord father to come, Jon strode toward the nearby fireplace. As he walked by the desk, he pinched an extinguished candle wick. As it flared into life, he held his palm flat over the fire. Before her mother or Maester Luwin could react, Jon’s still hand was covered in fire as it burned merrily. Catelyn gasped before her arms pulled Arya to her while Maester Luwin moved toward Jon.

Arya thought she her mother shouted for a moment as both she and Maester Luwin moved to rush toward her brother before he continued walking toward the fireplace. Jon seemed intent on his actions however. He extended his hand toward the fireplace and outstretched his palm. Just as Maester Luwin reached him, a gout of flame rushed out of the fire and caught the previously cold logs in the stone walled firepit.

“There’s no need to panic Maester Luwin.” Jon said quietly as his hand curled into a fist and abruptly extinguished. Catelyn had backed up a step, attempting to bring Arya with her even as Arya tried equally hard (though with far less success) to stay where she was.

Maester Luwin ignored Jon as he reached his side, all of their eyes on Jon’s unblemished hand. Even with Arya’s rudimentary knowledge of injury told her that it wasn’t possible for Jon to have had his hand literally covered in fire and looked untouched like this. Even though she had seen Jon do the same thing with a simple flexing of his hand not an hour earlier, it still made her uneasy to see her favored sibling with such a dangerous element burning away atop his skin as though it were simply trying to devour another log instead of him. She hurriedly gripped her mother’s left forearm with all the strength her ten years of age lent her and pulled it out to try and get out of her embrace and get to her brother. Partly to be sure of what she was seeing, partly to reassure herself her favorite sibling hadn’t done something so colossally stupid just now. Again.

Maester Luwin’s blue eyes fixed on Jon’s face intently after he scanned Jon’s hand while rotating it to see if there was even any redness to his skin tone. After only a few moments of silence, he asked a question.

“Is this part of what you wished to discuss with Lord Stark?” He said.

Arya looked back and forth between the two of them, wondering what Jon’s unburned hand had to do with the voice in the fire.

Jon nodded, confirming what Maester Luwin had apparently suspected. Arya however was not so easily satisfied with such a vague answer to so many questions.

“What are you talking about?!” She demanded, voice a bit louder than it needed to be. Though considering everything she was seeing she didn’t see what exactly was supposed to be appropriate for the situation even as her mother tried to get her to lower her voice. “What is it you need to talk to father about?!”

“A very good question indeed.” Came Eddard Stark’s voice from the doorway. Her lord father was still in his tunic of boiled leather atop chainmail with a cape of grey wolf fur. As he came into the solar, he unclasped it from around his throat, placing it upon the chair by the doorway even as he shut the oaken portal firmly: seemingly able to sense that the coming conversation would require privacy for all of them.

“Lord Stark.” Jon nodded respectfully. Immediately, Maester Luwin and her mother erupted in questions about whether her father had known that Jon could perform magic involving fire like that. Their voices combined to make their clear questions jumbled and indecipherable, the occasional agitated jangling of Maester Luwin’s proving singularly unhelpful in reducing the loudness of their questions. Her father held up his hands in an effort to get them to slow their voices.

“Jon, what is the meaning of this? I thought you were to leave for Braavos upon the morn.” He asked, grey eyes fixed on Jon’s in an unblinking stare Arya had often come to associate with his attempts at scolding them for some new mischief.

“My plans have changed Lord Stark.” The lowborn Stark answered. He gestured toward Arya. “With your permission, I need to bring Arya with me to receive the same training.”

“Absolutely not!” Came her mother’s instant answer.

“Why do you ask this of me Jon?” Her father asked. “I had thought-”

“Arya has powers akin to mine.” He calmly stated. “Element control and all.”

If she wasn’t very aware of how inappropriate it would be in the face of everything currently happening, Arya would’ve laughed at the goggle eyed expressions on every adult present.

A rasping laugh came from the fireplace even as everyone tried to assimilate Jon’s words.

“Well. You certainly know how to quiet a room young spark.” Came the voice that sounded almost identical to Rodrik Cassel, Winterfell’s Master-At-Arms.

As it spoke, both Arya and Lord Stark’s eyes swiveled to fix on the fire place.

“Ned?” “Lord Stark?” Came the questioning calls of her mother and Maester Luwin.

Arya felt a smile come to her face even as her mother’s arms tightened around her shoulders. The voice in the fire would help convince them, she was sure of it!

“Hello again Rollor.” She greeted brightly.

Her mother and father looked at her, while Maester Luwin glanced at Jon.

“Arya…who is that in the fire?” Her lord father asked cautiously.

“Can’t you hear him father?” She asked curiously, cocking her head to the left as her own grey eyes met his. She had seen his head turn toward the fire when R’hllor had started laughing so she knew he had been able to hear that.

“Lord Stark?” Maester Luwin asked incredulously. Arya squirmed as her mother’s grip tightened around her.

“What is going on here Ned?” Her mother whispered, true fear making itself known in her voice.

Jon’s head turned toward the fire as R’hllor spoke to him.

“They will not listen to us young spark. They shall require a demonstration and an impassioned plea.” The voice said, shifting to sound deeper but slightly more trilling: like a man who had once been a bird in a previous existence. She couldn’t help but think that his voice was somewhat strange. But it was also pleasantly so.

“Jon, what did it just say?” Their father asked urgently. She looked at her father now, having never heard him so visibly unnerved by something before.

“He said I need Arya to give a demonstration.” Jon answered, turning from the fireplace and slowly approached Arya and her mother cautiously, as though he expected to be attacked by Lady Stark at any moment.

Judging by her mother’s almost painfully tight grip on her shoulders that was an uncomfortably likely possibility to Arya.

“Arya?” Jon said quietly, kneeling some feet from herself and her mother. “You remember how I helped you hear Lord R’hllor earlier?”

She nodded even as her mother tried to interject.

“What did you do to her Snow?! If you’ve-” She started.

“I need you to put your hand out and remember that feeling inside you again. Let it flow into your hand.” He continued, seemingly ignoring her mother.

No matter what he strange things may come or events may happen, he was still Jon to her. She trusted him. She trusted his word. Arya closed her eyes as her hand automatically came up: palm flat and facing upward while her arm outstretched toward him. She tried to remember the feeling that had flowed through her. She tried to remember how Jon’s power had felt when it flowed from him into her as his voice whispered in her ear: guiding her, showing her the way. She could feel something building inside her core somewhere just above her navel beneath her ribs. It felt like something was gathering and starting to make its way out of her outstretched arm. However, instead of a rush of heat, this was a shiver of cold. Something like a flowing stream instead of a gust of hot air. As she felt it reach her hand, she couldn’t help but open her eyes. And as she did, they widened in astonishment as she beheld a thin but visible sheen of ice spontaneously form upon her palm, dripping downward to form icicles on the sides of her fingers.

There was silence for only a single frozen moment in time. And then, there was sound.

Her mother had let go of her shoulders and had moved toward Jon at the same time her father had while Maester Luwin had moved to get to Arya’s hand. Arya herself hadn’t moved her hand since it had frozen over. She couldn’t understand what was going on. She couldn’t feel the ice at all. Only days before her illness, she had had been out in the snow with Jon and Robb. She’d needed to bundle up in furs and leathers so she wouldn’t catch her death of cold as her lady mother had said. And even then, her cheeks had been red and windblown from the freezing wind when she took a hot bath that had helped her warm back up.

Almost in a trance she flexed her fingers that looked so fragile beneath the layer of ice to see what would happen. The ice cracked began to flex with her and then shattered, scattering all over the floor and startling her mother and father from attempting to interrogate Jon. Before they could recover from her unintended distraction, the voice in the flame spoke.

“Now young spark! Channel the fire through the eyes and the throat! Feel your mother’s presence and she shall speak and see through you!” It called in that same birdlike tone.

Their lord father looked startled as Jon’s hands ignited without warning. Her mother leaped back with a cry of alarm, accidentally hitting the desk as he did so. Jon seemed to need to gather his nerve for a moment before he brought his lit palms up to his eyes, driving the fire into them and him to his knees as his legs gave out from the shock to his system.

His scream was matched in volume only by her own.

Maester Luwin grabbed onto her before she could run to Jon to pull his arms away, to do something. Jon’s hands came down from his tightly shut eyes and his right hand tightly gripped his fingers around his throat as his left hand made a stopping gesture toward their father to prevent him from coming forward. Not that it seemed necessary, considering their father seemed wide eyed in shock: completely unsure of what was happening or what to do.

“Eddard?” Came a woman’s voice from Jon’s mouth.

Arya stopped trying to get to Jon as her parent’s faces turned the color of curdled milk as they seemed to stop breathing for several seconds. Maester Luwin’s arms slackened and she moved forward cautiously as Jon’s eyes opened. Jon was there but he wasn't. She didn’t know how to explain it. His eyes were still his but they weren’t at the same time. The same shape, almost the same shade of grey. But there was a different kind of life behind them. A light and an experience that despite everything that had turned the private world of Winterfell upside down she knew hadn’t been there before he had done…whatever it was that he had just done.

His mouth smiled as his eyes first came to rest on her.

“By the gods Ned, she really does look just like me.” He said, a surprised fondness in the woman’s voice as she looked at Arya. Jon’s head turned to look at Ned as his left hand continued supporting his kneeling body upon the floor.

“Lya?” Her father whispered in an almost broken tone.

Jon smiled sadly, tears pooling in his eyes as the woman spoke through him again.

“I know you must be confused Ned.” She said. “But I cannot hear you through Jon. I can only see and speak through him. He and his father have asked me to speak with you. To tell you why Arya needs to go with him.”

Her mother still seemed frozen, her lips barely moving as she whispered something.

“It’s not possible…It can’t be…” She said to herself, the paleness of her expression contrasting sharply with her red copper hair.

But what was the woman in Jon talking about when she said Jon’s father had asked her to speak with their father? Jon’s father was her father wasn’t he?

“I know you thought Jon was a Blackfyre for many years Eddard.” She said. “I know that’s why you claimed him as your own: to protect him from those who would seek to harm him simply because he was my son. But the time has come for the truth to be known Ned.”

She looked through Jon’s eyes at Maester Luwin, Arya and then her mother. A look of scorn passed across the face she shared with Jon as she briefly beheld her mother before her gaze returned to her father.

“It is time you told your wife that he is not your son but your nephew. A Snow not of Eddard Stark’s blood, but Lyanna Stark’s.” She said.

Arya could hear herself breathing in her own ears. Jon wasn’t her brother? He never had been?

She vaguely heard her mother urgently asking her father if it was true, if Jon had never been his bastard. She only had eyes for the woman inhabiting Jon’s body, her peripheral vision barely catching her father’s mute nod.

“But Jon’s sire is far more powerful and far more dangerous than any Targaryen. He is the god of the fire known as R’hllor in the east.” She continued as Arya’s mind made the connection. When Jon had been in the room talking to the R’hllor being she remembered now that he had called it father. He had known once he underwent his trials that it had claimed such. But if Jon wasn’t her father’s son, than why did he look so much like him? Why did he look so much like her? Wouldn’t he have looked more like his spirit parent or something?!

“He didn’t inherit his father’s look, but his power. And when he healed Arya, he awoke the touch of the divine in her blood.” She said. Arya was still reeling from her supposed Aunt’s revelations. It couldn’t be that Jon wasn’t her brother. If he wasn’t, than why was she so close to him? Why did he mean so much to her?

“Arya and Jon feel connected on a spiritual level. When he sacrificed to save Arya, what the maesters might call the magic in her blood sought out his to deepen the last connection it had pulling at it.” She said. “But she will not be like Jon: a being of fire and light. She possesses the strength of the Other: R’hllor’s other half. The being of ice and darkness.”

Her mother was saying no over and over again while her father was as still as a statue. Arya took a few hesitating steps toward Jon that Maester Luwin didn’t stop.

“She needs to learn to control these abilities the same as Jon.” She said more urgently as the smell of burning copper began filling the room. “Our family has always held strong connections to the Old Gods Ned. But they are gods of growth and slow by nature. R’hllor and the Other are more destructive and more visible. If they do not learn to control these powers, they will be controlled **by** them.”

Two tears fell from Jon/Lyanna’s eyes. “I know I asked much of you to keep Jon safe my brother. But I ask this last thing of you. For both their sakes: please let Jon’s father teach them to control their own strength.”

Jon’s head abruptly came down and he vomited blood onto the floor. It was visibly steaming.

As his head came back up, Lyanna’s voice was wavering and sounded farther away.

“I cannot stay much longer without harming Little Jon! Please Eddard!” She said as her father visibly flinched backward at the nickname for Jon. “To keep them safe, you need to send them away!”

Jon’s hand stopped burning and he gasped loudly before he started coughing, both hands on the stone floor now as his red throat seemed to throb angrily at him.

Before anyone could react, Arya was standing in front of Jon. His hand briefly lit again as he brought it to his neck, presumably to heal it of the damage done when he had allowed her aunt to possess him. Her Aunt. Jon’s mother.

“Did she speak true Jon?” She asked, clenched fists at her sides to prevent them from shaking. “Are you really not my brother?”

She wanted with all her ten year old heart for him to say no. To tell her that she was still his little sister. To tell her that she wasn’t alone among her brothers and sister. To tell her that she wasn’t odd. Unusual. Strange for being who she was.

But it wasn’t to be.

“My mother told the truth Arya.” He confirmed softly, his grey eyes meeting her own.

The tear streaks Lyanna had cried were already dried from his face. He knew that he wasn’t her brother. And yet his face didn’t seem to show any sort of hardship at accepting that as a fact. That it was a strain for him to believe and assimilate this.

She lowered her head so he wouldn’t see her tears as her eyes scrunched shut.

She felt her eyes welling even in the face of her attempts to stop it.

“You’re not my brother anymore.” She repeated aloud, trying to ease the throbbing pain of loss in her chest that came from the admission. She felt his arms come around her shoulders and his head rest on her left shoulder.

“What in the world makes you say that?” He prompted gently. It reminded her of when he would ask her why she would take anything stupid Jayne Poole had to say about her long face to heart. It reminded her of the role he had filled for her that he couldn’t anymore.

“You’re not my brother anymore!” She yelled trying to raise her arms up to flail, to hit, to do something to escape his embrace that she just wanted to fall into like she always did but couldn’t anymore. “You’re my cousin! You’re not…” She stopped struggling against him.

“You’re not like me anymore.” She finished in a hurt whisper. And there was the crux of it. Before they were outcasts together. They were both the most like their father, the most Stark in looks and temperament. But now she was alone among her own family. The only person who could relate to her was a boy she had loved as her brother whom she hadn’t even realized wasn’t. It was a knowledge that drove home just how alone and out of place she was among her own family even at such a young age.

“That’s not true and you know it.” He rebuked her without heat. He moved his head back so they were face to face again. She wasn’t even registering her parents, Maester Luwin or the rest of the room for that matter anymore. All there was at this time was she and he.

“You will always be my little sister.” He said with one of his small Jon smiles. “I am still a Stark by blood like you. And the fact that we have different fathers means nothing compared to our memories.” He continued.

He pulled her to him again as his right hand rubbed the top of her head and mussed her hair affectionately. It was that more than anything that convinced her.

She’d been so caught up in the revelation of his parentage and what it meant that she’d forgotten that it didn’t change what they had been to each other. She still wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. But she knew that she didn’t want him to stop being her brother even if he wasn’t anymore.

Arya’s arms came up to embrace Jon. They tightened around his sides as his arms remained around her shoulder. As her head rested on his right shoulder and her tears became ones of mingled relief and lessened tension, she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let anything stand against them again. Jon was still her favorite brother. And if she had any say in the matter (and she certainly intended to if it involved Jon) it would remain so for the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Took awhile, but here it is ynoidea! Hope you like it! :)


	3. Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jory Cassel might be in over his head

While Jory Cassel wasn’t the most eloquent of men, he was one of the most loyal.

He’d been a trusted solider for the Starks ever since his uncle Rodrik had become the Master-at-Arms and Castellen for Winterfell. He had also taken the position of Captain of the Guard at a fairly young age after his father Martyn had been killed trying to help their liege lord Eddard Stark reach his sister Lyanna at the Tower of Joy.

And now of course, it was that very loyalty that was to be put to the test escorting his lord’s bastard son Jon Snow and his second daughter Arya Stark. He hadn’t been told why, he had only been told that Jon and Arya would be making their way across the Narrow Sea from White Harbor.

Lady Stark’s eyes were red rimmed, their harsh color a contrast to her soft auburn hair, but she herself had been composed while his lord hadn’t looked at him directly while relaying his orders. He had thought to ask why he was telling him to do this and how he was supposed to protect them both but Lord Stark would only ever say that they had an ally across the sea that would help him look after the two.

They were to leave early in the morning with the changing of the guard so as not to make the departure harder and more confusing for the rest of the household than it had to be. With that revelation, Jory grew more and more wary about this assignment Lord Stark had given: unsure if he should be sending them away at all. But even if he was the head of his lord’s household guard it wasn’t his place to question his orders. He simply had to trust that Lord Stark knew what he was doing.

As they rode their horses south toward the North’s most prominent harbour, Arya and Jon had dropped their hoods off their heads that had hidden their faces from any who had perhaps been awake when they left Winterfell in the dead of night. Despite the five year age difference between them, they wore identical expressions of combined sadness and determination on their long Stark faces. He supposed it was one of those things were Winterfell’s two biggest troublemakers were of the same mind once again. They were both conflicted about leaving Winterfell to…do what it was they were going to do. But by the same token, they had never been allowed beyond the walls of Winterfell to explore the wider world with this much freedom and trust to make their own way even being escorted as they were.

But as they made their way to White Harbor, Jory began to notice strange things about the two Starks. (Well, technically one Stark and one Snow but he honestly wasn’t going to split hairs on that. To his mind, Jon and Arya were close as only a brother and sister could whether they shared the same last name or not.) The third night they stopped to make their camp, they had one of those silent exchanges that would occasionally drive Lady Stark spare when she caught them at it back in Winterfell.

It had started with Jory telling Jon that he needed to help him hunt tonight instead of teach Arya how to draw a dagger quickly. Jory hadn’t personally understood that, especially in light of most of his exposure to the way young girls thought being his own niece Beth, Lord Stark’s eldest Sansa and her handmaiden Jayne Poole. Jon had looked at Arya with a question in the furrow of his brow. Arya had twitched her left hand at him and raised her left eyebrow in Jory’s direction. Before he could ask what they were doing, Jon had placed his hand in the small pit they had dug for the wood meant to fuel their fire.

Jory couldn’t honestly say he had expected the bastard Stark to ignite the fire by holding his hand above the wood and flexing his hand. When he had leapt backward clumsily enough to land on his arse, Arya had snorted inelegantly before making a sudden pushing gesture toward Jon with her left hand that resulted in air so cold it appeared to contain snow blow him over with unexpected force.

What in the name of the old gods had he gotten himself into?

As Jon would explain to him that night, it was a quest to control powers they had recently acquired. Jon’s were based in fire that had allowed him to heal Arya. His powers had allowed him to come by a ritual to do that which had resulted in burning down the Sept. Jory had remembered wondering when the Sept burned down whether or not it was natural for fire to burn so brightly or so intensely when feeding on stone. Apparently he had been right to wonder.

Once Jon and Arya had gotten him to promise that he wouldn’t say anything as they journeyed, Jory had noticed Jon using some strange training methods to help Arya practice. The most recent was the time for several days before entering White Harbor that both of them had bound dark cloth over their eyes in two layers. Jon appeared to have some problem reading fine details in his surroundings but was miraculously able to see or sense through the cloth well enough to dodge a few testing sword swings Jory reluctantly made when the young Stark boy had insisted.

Arya however was another story.

The first time Jon had moved away from her after putting the blindfold on and she tried to follow his voice, she had managed to walk into the side of one of the horses. As she did it emitted a startled noise and moved forward but fortunately was too well trained to bolt or attempt to kick.

“Concentrate your energy on your eyes Arya!” Jon had chided gently, moving around Jory as though the blindfold was of no consequence to him. “You need to use it to see!”

Jory watched carefully as Arya went very still and for almost ten minutes stood in the exact spot, visibly attempting to draw out whatever magic it was Jon had instructed her to find. He could almost pinpoint the moment that she managed to succeed because whilst she had stood still, Jon had continued moving: evidently set on practicing what he preached to his younger sister.

When at last she managed to draw on whatever she was drawing on, she abruptly moved her head so that she was looking directly at Jon near several of the thicker tree trunks by the side of the Kingsroad. Jory couldn’t help himself at this point, he just had to ask.

“What do you see Little Underfoot?” He asked, using the nickname most of the help around Winterfell had for the most mischievous Stark girl of the family. It was an earned thing to be certain; though it was hard to say whether the incident with the rogue ravens merrily flapping through the halls of Winterfell or the impromptu soup flood in the kitchens was the turning point that had earned her the moniker.

“Jon? Is that you?” She called to him, seemingly ignoring Jory for the moment.

“It’s me Arya.” He answered, a smile lightening his partially clothed visage. “Do you see the colors around us?”

“Yeah. What are they?” She asked eagerly, making her way toward her baseborn sibling.

“Well, if you’re seeing the oranges and reds I’m seeing, than that would be the heat of the world.” Jon said. Jory was getting confused yet again with these kids. What oranges? Reds? Was he referring to the sun? “The blues and the greens are the cold. The yellow is the in-between.” The what?!

But Arya nodded in sudden understanding, a smile breaking across her mouth as her face continued tracking her bastard brother’s movements as Jon continued pacing around their clearing. It was giving Jory a bit of a headache trying to understand what was going on while also keeping track of why they were moving the way they were.

“Is that why the horses and Jory stand out so much against the rest of the world like this?” She asked, clear wonderment in her voice.

Jon nodded, confusing Jory further. How did he expect her to see the non-verbal gesture?

Arya’s grin looked almost painful it was so wide. She charged Jon and he began running from her. What she shouted made Jory decide once and for all he wasn’t going to even try to understand what they were doing anymore.

“With this, we’ll never lose to Bran and Robb at hide n’ find again!” She cried gleefully, not caring that Jon was still managing to keep ahead of her.

After getting into White Harbor with Jon and Arya successfully disguised as his two young squires, Jory was contemplating how the hell he was supposed to explain to Lord and Lady Stark what was going on. Especially in light of Jon and Arya cutting off the young girl’s hair and dressing her up in a leather jerkin with leather riding pants and fur-lined boots. Both of them had roughly cut down their hair so that it barely extended past the tops of their ears.

Jon was continuing to wear the blinding headband whilst his ‘younger brother’ (now that Arya had been changed into a boy, they both insisted that she be referred to as Arry) left his grey eyes uncovered. And now they were in the middle of the tavern known as The Flashing Finn. It was one of the better places in White Harbor: the walls a rich oaken color with plenty of lamps around and an area set aside for the rare bards that decided to venture to this area of the North. The stools and tables were closer to pine in grain with a lighter look, but that was possibly due to the occasional candles that dotted them in the dim night as it was now. Tonight was a rare treat for the inn for a small group of mummers had come from across the sea and had decided to perform before they left on their return voyage by the morning light.

Jory was keeping a discreet lookout for Jon and Arya as they sat by the rough target of a large merman carved into the wall nearby as a ship’s crew that had stopped in during a leave for shore and had decided to hold an impromptu knife throwing contest. Jory was barely listening as the two competitors argued with each other about who was better.

“I’m tellin’ ya Hobb, you couldn’t hit the merman hisself if your drink depended on it!” Said his squatter, bulkier crewmate. The man seemed the type who had seen more than his fair share of problems upon the sea, his arms corded and windblown from constant exposure to the wetter elements of the world while his green eyes flashed passionately.

“And I’m tellin’ YOU Sykes that you may be the captain’s favorite, but that don’t mean you can out throw me!” Came Hobb’s rejoinder. Hobb almost towered over the man known as Sykes, coming in at just a head and a half taller than Jon. His thick brown hair and beard almost made him seem a pile of moss stuck atop a sailor’s body that had learned to walk and talk. His thick, overhanging eyebrows almost completely shadowed his blue eyes that spoke to a man who’d known his friend for a long time and trusted him with his life but if he kept pushing his temper like this…

Jory noticed Jon and Arya get up from their seats when the barkeep gave them three mugs of ale, presumably to take back to their table with Jory. As they walked by the sailors, Jon was abruptly dragged into their verbal pissing contest.

“Alright then Hobb!” Sykes said, tone speaking to him being fed up with the other man’s denial of his own lack of skill. “Here’s the deal:” he proposed as Jon set down the two mugs he was carrying at the edge of their table while Arya ignored the gimlet eye Jory fixed on her for apparently getting her own private mug. “We get this lad to throw with us! Whoever does worse than this poor blind bugger has to accept the other as the superior thrower!! Deal?!”

Jon turned abruptly toward them, the question not even leaving his lips before Hobb agreed and Sykes dragged him over unceremoniously. Jory made to stand up and get after them, but stopped at the sound of Arya’s urgently whispered no.

Jory tried to make up his mind whether it was good or bad that Jon was apparently going to be roped into an impromptu test for his restriction of using only his mystical fire vision. As he did, Jon called out to Arya.

“Arry!” He called. Arya paused with the mug partway toward her mouth.

“Could you jump up and hit the merman’s face for me?” he asked her kindly. Jory steadfastly refused to think about what Jon hoped to accomplish with having Arya do that. But she obeyed quickly, darting past the group who laughed at the seemingly blind boy’s odd request. Arya leapt up, slapping her hand loudly on the merman’s face as the musicians wound down their rendition of The Merman’s Tale. Jon swiftly drew his arm back, knife blade gripped firmly between his thumb and pointer finger while the curve of the blade was facing toward the ceiling and the flat back rested on the connected area between his thumb and finger. Jon drew his hand back: steady as a drawn bowstring before he abruptly threw it forward, his arm coming to rest almost down near his waist as the knife took flight.

The laughing sailors stopped laughing when Jon’s blindfolded thrown blade struck the merman slightly to the right of his left eye.

Two more rounds and Jon had consistently scored better than the sailors who attempted to challenge him. Even as Jory tried to stop it from coming further, Arya loudly cheered from the table. As the beleaguered household guardsman turned, he saw that Arya had managed to finish over three quarters of her ale. The young lady let out a deep and loud belch as the sailors tried to follow Jon back to their table to figure out how he was able to throw when he was seemingly blindfolded. Since the contest had drawn half the attention of the bar, one of the more drink addled patrons slurred that surely Jon had been cheating at the game.

A new tune was striking up from the band of bards at this point as Hobb immediately gained a suspicious look and demanded that Jon take off the blindfold so they could see if he was really blind or not. With Jon’s refusal, Hobb attempted to grab Jon’s shoulder, only to be shoved back by an extremely red faced and somewhat cross eyed Arya even as Jory tried in vain to defuse the situation. Jory couldn’t recall where the first hit came from, but all he knew was that a jaunty tune was on the air as Arya spun in a circle right inside one of her attacker’s downward aiming punches.

“Downsides went up-hey!” Came through the atmosphere in time to her arching backward, impacting both her palms beneath the unlucky sod’s sternum, driving the breath out of him even while her fingers grabbed his linen and held on.

“Outsides went wide” Came as she somehow managed to hoist her ten year old frame upward to drive both knees into the man’s head, causing him to fall down with an extremely pained yell. The fall jostled her enough that her head accidentally came down on her opponent’s crotch. His high pitched cry was heard even as one of his friends tried to bring a stool down on the drunken young hellion.

“As the fiddle played a twiddle” Came while Jon dove at the man trying to smash her in, driving them both to the ground while Arya flopped onto her knees, a light giggling escaping her even as yet another lout tried to rush and kick her in the side while she was down.

“And the moon slept till seventh day!” Came as her arms impossibly caught the leg and pushed her in a gravity defying half roll up the leg, making her left elbow strike his stomach before the back of her left fist smashed his nose in, driving him back toward the wall.

It had taken quite some doing to manage their escape from the other patrons and the city guards, especially with Jon carrying Arya over his right shoulder like a drunken sack of potatoes as she called out behind her for their enemies to “shtahd an fig like da drooken munkees yo arrr!!”

They were on the road again now directly because of that while Jon calmly led Arya’s horse along by the reins while the little lady herself was draped over the saddle snoring loudly enough to set any nearby crows cawing.

As Jon at last explained to Jory that they’d never intended to leave the North: that it was an agreed story with Lord Stark so that their training didn’t reach the wrong ears, Jory was glad for the first time that he wasn’t expected to keep his lord and lady appraised of what was happening. He tried to imagine sending this message by raven.

_Lord & Lady Stark: Jon & Arya taken to blindfolded hide n find. Lady Arya able to fight grown men when drunk. Jon able to throw knives blindfolded. Will let you know more as it comes. Jory._

Jory groaned as he imagined it.

 _‘Well, this is certainly an interesting way to start training.’_ He silently groused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if it's a good thing or not that I appear to be one of the only authors I know of that has twice now attempted to put the description "Drunken Fist Master" to the name "Arya Stark." Hope you guys enjoyed this addition! :)


End file.
